Tag Archives: gold south sea pearls

Kintsugi: golden joinery…golden repair

We’ve done a slow, under-the-radar sort of launch for our Kintsugi collection of repaired ‘broken pearls’ but now is the time to tell all.

Maybe three years ago I was at a Hong Kong Gem Show and discovered the existence of broken pearls after finding a bag of all sorts of non-mainstream pearls at the back of a tiny stall featuring a mix of different sea pearls.

Gold, white and blue South Sea ‘broken’ pearls. Great colour and lustre.

Intrigued, I sat down and started to go through the bag (it had well over a thousand pearls in it). There were tiny little round gold and white and pink, and blue and green south sea pearls, no bigger than 6mm. there were various keishi and there were these weird big and small pearls with missing nacre, some with huge holes in them, so you could see the nucleus, or the hole was full of concholin, layer on layer showing like the rings in a tree, or the pearl was hollow. No nucleus no anything. Just a nacre shell and a big hole. They were fascinating. The sort of pearls – lumps of nacre really – which shouted ‘take me home and let loose your imagination’. So of course I did.

Mostly large and gold South Sea pearls.

The bag of mixed pearls, all south sea of various colours, sat on my workbench for months. Periodically I tipped them out and looked at them. They looked right back at me.

Then I went to Bangkok and found a supplier of gold leaf (in Buddhist temples – as a way of offering – you buy a tiny ‘page’ and apply it to a statue). Again, I was intrigued and bought some. I had a vague idea that I would apply some to a statue at home and that would be a nice thing to do.

I never got around to doing that. The leaves of gold leaf sat on my workbench. The bag of broken pearls sat on my workbench. I had an ‘ahhhhh’ moment and the Kintsugi collection was a glint in my eye. No more than that as I had no idea how to fix the gold leaf to the pearls. I had bought some size, the traditional glue for gold leaf. It’s a treacly goo. I tried that. Total disaster. The inside of one hollow pearl became a mud mix of gold and goo which never dried. Finally I worked out how to apply the gold leaf, how to make it adhere and how to seal it.

kintsugi collection gold south sea pearls earrings

Big gold South Sea half pearls with thick gold leaf to the front.

On the way I’ve got much better at handling the gold leaf, which is so fine and light it will waft off and fly around if you so much as breathe on it. There’s times when, unknowingly, I’ve walked around with a gold tip to my nose. Whenever I’ve worked on it I certainly get gold fingers and gold fingernails.

kintsugi collection gold south sea pearls bracelet

A Kintsugi Collection unique bracelet of gold South Sea pears and vermeil

The collection was called the broken collection (no…), the gold leaf collection (a bit of a jam pot label name) until a website reader said that the technique reminded her of the Japanese art of Kintsugi. What was Kintsugi (isn’t google wonderful!) We had a name. Perfect.

kintsugi collection gold south sea pearls necklace

Necklace of gold South Sea pearls, these were mostly hollow.

So now, after much experimentation, perspiration and fun in the designing and making, the collection is here.

Lavish gold leaf on this gold South Sea pearl. Sometimes you look at the pearl and wonder..what happened here?

F

Farm

Nearly every pearl available anywhere in the world is farmed – cultured. Pearl farms tend to be stunningly beautiful places.

Shot of the Kamoka Tahitian pearl farm on Ahe, French Polynesia

Pearl farm on Talesei Island, Indonesia…golds and white south sea pearls

Faux Pearl

A false pearl bead manufactured by coating the inside of a hollow glass sphere or the outside of a solid glass or plastic sphere with a pearlescent coating which is sometimes pearl powder. Faux is a fancy word for fake. Also called shell pearls. They are of course perfectly round in shape, with great lustre and even colour. White shell pearls are very white, which is a give-away. All fake pearls feel smooth when rubbed on the teeth and the drill holes tend to be larger.

Fiji

There is a young but growing pearl industry in Fiji, and the pearls produced have a huge and stunning range of colours, mostly shifted away from typical Tahitian colours into the chocolates and earthy shades

Newly harvested, straight from the shell, Fiji pearls

Freshwater

A pearl grown in a freshwater river, lake or pond margaritifera mollusc. Often more irregular in shape and more varied in colour than salt water pearls freshwater molluscs are nucleated by creating a small incision in the fleshy mantle tissue and inserting a piece of mantle tissue from another mussel. This process may be completed 25 times on either side of the mantle, producing up to 50 pearls at a time. The molluscs are then returned to their freshwater environment where they are tended for 2-6 years. The resulting pearls are of solid nacre, but without a bead nucleus to guide the growth process, the pearls are rarely round.

‘A ray of sunshine’

It’s always nice to get praise, so we are basking fit to tan today with this email from a long time pearl lover and customer ‘ Thank you so much – I am absolutely delighted with my new pearls – Ithey are the most beautiful….I love the colour variation….It is as if I am wearing a ray of sunshine around my neck’

The pearls – south seas – came from two strands I found during my last trip to Hong Kong. They were huge roundish golds of all shades and whites and as soon as I saw them I thought of this particular customer and snapped them up. I knew she would love them.

Here they are as strands, photographed in Hong Kong, at the wholesalers.

Huge 17mm gold south sea with some whites in one of the strands. Great colour and lustre

and here they are, blended into one 55cm necklace

The finished necklace

Very satisfying to have a happy customer

South sea pearls and findings

A busy and successful day. Started with a visit to the main findings house, where an hour or so of browsing the many tiny drawers produces the stash of gold and silver to enable the making for the next few months. Thank the gods of jewellery that the price of gold has dropped. Plus I was able to get just about everything I had on the list. It’s so much easier to shop for findings in a cool atmosphere (literally, with aircon plus only me in the sales room)while the stand at the show is chaotic. I’ve never seen fights break out but there is some serious elbow action and shoving as peeps jostle to get to find the right tiny packets. One person came in while I was there, prowled around the room asked if they were going to be out at the airport for the show and then left…why would anyone do that? I was able to chat to the super knowledgeable staff and get some very good suggestions on what to use to achieve what I wanted. No chance of that with the scrum at the show.

It’s always so much more relaxed and friendly and calm at the offices before the show. Plus you get the chance to really poke around and find the good stuff.

After a couple of hours there I moved on to my favourite supplier of south sea and tahitian pearls. I was looking for some gold half drilled drops but no joy – no decent pairs for earrings. But I did find some lovely strands, including these two, at up to 17mm.

Huge 17mm gold south sea with some whites in one of the strands. Great colour and lustre

Same strands, head on

These two are both natural colour different gold shades with some white in one of the strands. They are huge – up to 17mm – with great colour and lustre. Yes, flaws but otherwise, wowser!

Also some smaller rounds strands, again great lustre and very strong colours.

Looking through the stocks in the wholesalers vault I spotted this collection of loose single undrilleds. Including bags of dyed gold south seas. Yuck. Whether they are dying freshwater or south sea to look like the rich high end golds, the colours are invariably horrible ear-was tones. Do not be fooled.